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Tuesday, 20 January 2015

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Rachel Tan

Note: Diary of an NUS Museum Intern is
a series of blog posts written by our interns about their experiences
during the course of their internships. Working alongside their mentors,
our interns have waded through tons of historical research, assisted in
curatorial work, pitched in during exhibition installations and
organised outreach events! If you would like to become our next intern, visit our internship page for more information!

In
December 2014, 8 interns joined us to work with the
curatorial and outreach teams, conducting research for upcoming
exhibitions and programmes in 2015 at the museum and the NUS Baba House.
Besides those involving our collections and recent acquisitions, the interns prepared for upcoming exhibitions surrounding the work of alumni artists, the
T.K. Sabapathy Collection, as well as SEABOOK. They also assisted with ongoing happenings at the museum, including exhibition installation and programme facilitation.

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Rachel Tan is a third-year English Literature student at NUS FASS. In December 2014, she interned with the Outreach department, assisting in research for various ongoing and upcoming programme series including Malaya Black & White. She also assisted in the organising and execution of Outreach events and responsibilities.

“What a museum chooses to exhibit is sometimes less
important than how such decisions are made and what values inform them.”

- Martin Filler

This quote by Filler resonates greatly with my learning
experience over the past five weeks as an Outreach intern at the museum. Having
just returned from an exchange programme in June 2014, I visited many museums
in Europe and the various exhibitions really fascinated me. I began wondering
about how an exhibition is conceptualised as well as how it comes to fruition and
I realised that I had a very limited scope of knowledge with regards to
curatorial work. Thus, I decided to apply for an internship at the NUS Museum to
get a better understanding of the internal workings of a museum.

Although I was not attached to any particular curatorial
project, I felt that the position as an Outreach intern gave me a very
comprehensive overview of how the museum was run. Listening to the exchanges
between my supervisors and the curators provided me with an interesting picture
of the thought processes behind how certain ideas are conceived and carried
forward (or not). The scope of work that the Outreach department deals with is
actually a very wide one that includes publicity, marketing, programming,
logistics and all sorts of enquiries. Of course, there was also event planning
and management which was another key aspect of their job scope.

As an Outreach intern I realised that aside from the nitty
gritty details of logistics planning, understanding the subject matter of the
various projects is another key aspect. In a sense, my supervisors, Michelle
and Trina were like middlemen who had to first obtain a firm understanding of
what they were dealing with before they could liaise with the curators and
discuss the logistic arrangements.

During my internship, I was mainly involved in the
programming of two projects, first of which is a new segment in an ongoing film
screening series, Malaya Black & White. My work was focused on researching
the films and trying to secure a copy of them. This included either watching
the films if they were available or reading the texts that they were based on.
Procuring the films was not easy because there was little information about
them and some were either unreleased or not produced in playable formats. As a
Singaporean, this film series departs from the usual thread of
post-independence Singapore and her struggles towards becoming a developed
nation. Instead, the series provided me with an unconventional view of our
country through the lens of the developed world and further enriched my
understanding of the social tensions during that period of Singapore history.

The other series that I worked on was the Foundation series
that is tied to the current exhibition titled Between Here and Nanyang: Marco
Hsu’s Brief History of Malayan Art. This series includes panel discussions,
film screenings and tours in conjunction with the exhibition. I was involved in
researching the films for this series which features prominent films from the
1950s to 1960s as well. This series pursues the question of identity and
freedom against the background of the strict social conventions of the time.
Some films are shot on various locations aside from Singapore, including Hong
Kong and Cambodia. However, the key issues highlighted are all closely related
to the Singapore’s own social climate and history.

On top of that, I worked with fellow intern Gui Shuen on
the designs of e-flyers for these film screenings. I researched the films and
advised him on the key themes of the film and what could possibly be featured
in the design. As such, I was also given the opportunity to write the blurbs
for these films! It was a new and very fun experience for me because it
deviated from the usual serious academic style of writing that I was used to.
This experimentation with a different style of writing was one of the aspects
of the internship that I greatly enjoyed.

Apart from research work, I have also worked on other
aspects such as planning for field trips and signage measurements. The latter
was done in preparation for the new museum’s new Resource Gallery opening. It
was a different side of the job that I was engaged in and it was something that
showed me how dynamic the job scope was for the Outreach team. It was
definitely not about sitting at our tables the whole day because there was constant back-and-forth between the office and the museum.

In my final week at the museum, the Curating Lab: Phase 03
exhibition opened and I experienced event hosting for the first time in my life!
Admittedly, I was a ball of nerves before the start of the exhibition but a few
rehearsals beforehand and the advice from others really helped ease the tension
quite a bit. I fumbled a few times during the actual run under the pressure of
over 140 pairs of eyes but it was nevertheless a very good first experience for
me and I am truly grateful for this chance.

I don’t think that I will ever look at museums in the same
light again after the past one month. It was a really enriching experience that
threw light upon many of the areas that I was unfamiliar with and now I truly
appreciate the sheer amount of hard work that goes into tying everything
together so as to present an informative, coherent and interesting exhibition.
Of course, none of the above mentioned would have ever been possible without my
awesome supervisors Trina and Michelle as well as the rest of the museum staff
and I would really like to thank them for their guidance, patience and the
laughter that they bring. It has made my stay at the museum a truly enriching
and enjoyable one. I hope to be back again someday!